by Elaine Slatter
Of course you do, but sometimes you just don’t know the right path to success. From my experience of many years of privately coaching and mentoring women in business, here are the top 5 tips for becoming a successful business owner.
Understand your Numbers
Not the favourite topic for many of us, but essential to understanding your whole business. At the beginning, when you are looking for investors/loans, the first questions will be about your business numbers.
Did you know the whole business health is in your profit and loss statement? If you don’t understand what goes into a P&L statement, your accountant can help you interpret accounting terms such as: gross profit, fixed and variable expenses and net profit.
Market Your Business and Fill the Sales Funnel
Along with understanding your numbers this is the next important part of business success. Yes, there is a cost to customer acquisition, but without customers, where would you be?
See what millionaire and celebrity Shark, Robert Herjavec, has to say in his video about these two key steps to success.
Find a Business Mentor
Many organizations, including our own Fabulous Fempreneurship community, recognize the importance of having someone help you and run free mentorship programmes. Mentors don’t operate your business, they listen to your questions & concerns and help guide you to the right solutions. Mentors have a wealth of experience, why not tap into their knowledge. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, it shows how determined you are to be the best.
Have The Right Structure for Growth
This includes putting in place systems and processes as your business grows. When you are ready to hire additional employees, this will help with the on-boarding of new members of your team. Even if you are using contractors to help you, systems and processes will shorten their learning curve.
Be Ready to Pivot for Success
Your first business idea doesn’t always work out. Entrepreneurs usually have many ideas before one takes off. Just read the story of Haute Chocolate and how they changed their focus away from chocolate to inventing a stock photography site for women entrepreneurs! Talk about pivoting your business, this is a classic example of completely changing your business and finding the magic.
Elaine Slatter is a Small Business Expert, founder of XL Consulting Group and author of the popular book, “Fabulous Fempreneurship”, a complete business guide for women. XL Consulting Group helps entrepreneurs with market planning, strategy, branding, web design and social media. She has over 30 years of executive business and marketing experience and is ready to help you rocket your business to success. Elaine is passionate about mentoring women to become successful women entrepreneurs. To find out more, visit XL Consulting Group or join the Fabulous Fempreneurship mastermind.
